This disclosure relates generally to digital magazines, and more particularly to determining viewability based on user interaction with any type of advertisement or sponsored content in a flip-based digital magazine environment.
Digital distribution channels disseminate a wide variety of digital content including text, images, audio, links, videos, and interactive media (e.g., games, collaborative content) to users. Recent development of mobile computing devices such as personal computers, smart phones, tablets, etc., enables users to access numerous content items in various forms, and provide feedback for the content items.
Among various content items, advertisements or sponsored content items may be presented through mobile computing devices. To ensure that users have the opportunity to see the advertisements, viewability standards are employed. Viewability of a content item is an indication of whether the content item is deemed viewable. In one example approach of determining viewability, a duration of the advertisement in-view is measured. For example, an advertisement presented over a threshold time (e.g., 1 second) may be deemed viewed by the user.
However, determining viewability based on the time measurement alone causes content items to be presented in an unpleasing manner. In particular, advertisements preventing a user control may be presented for a predetermined time or a pop up window may be generated in front of a news article the user intends to consume in order to satisfy viewability standards based on time measurement. Such advertisements depriving a user control for a certain amount of time to meet viewability standards degrade user experience.